Tuesday, June 20, 2000
Douglas ate, drank, forged a friendship
Things we're pretty sure Michael Douglas took away from Cincinnati after his Traffic film wrapped here: Miles of footage, golfing blisters, a few extra pounds, new friends and a promise to come back in September.
The pounds and new friend go together: Douglas ate five times at Jeff Ruby restaurants, then went out with him and sometimes with wife Rickelle for nightcaps: One night it was Neon's, where they did cigars (XX0, a high-end boutique brand) in the garden. Then it was the Cincinnatian (Douglas stayed there), where they closed the bar. Then it was Rumba, the club upstairs at the Waterfront. Then the Precinct.
Michael Douglas with Rickelle and Jeff Ruby.
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“I guess there was karma there,” Ruby says. “We're both Jewish, we're from New Jersey, we like a nightcap. At one point, I said to him, "I can't wait for you to leave. This is partying too much.”
Douglas discovered Ruby's downtown steakhouse when he had dinner there with several Lindners — Craig, Carl III, some of their kids — before a Reds game. The next night he got carryout — a huge bone-in rib-eye.
He discovered the Precinct when Ruby invited him to dinner. That led him to the Waterfront twice, once on a rented boat with director Steven Soderbergh and cast members Erika Christensen and Amy Irving.
Except for the Precinct and the Lindner date, he paid his own way every time.
When not eating or filming, he was golfing: 27 holes at Camargo, 27 at Maketewah after being out 'til 3:30 a.m.
He also made a promise: Ruby gets grilled in a Sept. 6 roast thrown by Cystic Fibrosis. Called Hall of Famers and Hollywood, it will be a crowd of sports and Hollywood types — tentatively Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Oscar Robertson, Mike Piazza, Pete Rose, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy — working the room.
And Douglas. He promised to return, barring complications with Traffic or with the baby fiancee Catherine Zeta-Jones is expecting in August.
Persuasive? Oh. So an ad exec and a lawyer are the two most persuasive guys in town.
“That's how it looks, but not how it is,” says ad exec Jerry Galvin, half of the team that won the Mercantile Library's Great Debates, the series that pitted prominent locals against each other arguing whacko topics. Attorney Eric Kearney was Galvin's other half.
“It's a shame, but it proved that style can win over substance. Eric and I were determined to put on a good show. We didn't know a thing about the issue (liquor sales over the Internet) and didn't care either. Just wanted to score a few cheap laughs.
“Our opponents (theologians Hal Porter and Art Dewey) were better prepared. We were just funny. Maybe not as funny as Judge (Tom) Crush. He came in with hedge clippers to cut us down.”
Mercantile librarian Albert Pyle says the debates were such a huge success, they'll do it again next year.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at (513) 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
